Here's Alison...

Next "on stage" is Alison Norrington - who is going to talk about her writing and new media experiences.

A few people have had to go - but Naomi and Dean from the Poetry Trust have arrived with new copies of the Poetry Paper.

"immersing reader with emerging platforms" is Alison Norrington's presentation. She'd released 3 chick-lit books and wanted to always bring something else to the stories - and has done a course in new media and literature.

She researched her market - women readers and the publishers who were publishing chick lit.

Some publishers were thinking about "added value" but others went "do you mean the internet?

Her 4th novel "Staying single" was partly written and published via a blog. It didnt work to do it as chapters - she had to cut up into shorter chunks - and so she had to rewrite how she was writing it. It had to bring people back the next day - also allowed for subscribers...

The project became too big for one person - she was creating podcast chapters, a sister site called www.sophiedilemma.com - even took videos and created an email address for the character.

She came in for some criticism from people putting videos on the website. She created a bit of a community around the documentary element of the story. She asked people to send in their chat up lines, how they'd been dumped etc. Had around 7000 hits, 600 subscribers. Most popular part of the story was the documentaries on Youtube. This was part of her course - actually promoting the book as she wrote it.

Its amazing the amount of additional work she did - even using Machinima and Second Life as well as keeping forums going - even writing Sophie's "column" for the blog.

Halfway through the story she went on holiday and her character Sophie came on holiday with her - her "editor told her to go". 83 people asked for postcards from Sophie... proving that people liked to have something real.

"Sophie" did receive some rather dodgy emails - as well as some supportive ones. The business cards she put everywhere were really successful in bringing much in.

Shes showing a little video now of "chat up lines" - some are really bad. Might even work... so quite a clever bit of viral marketing, called "Pulling Power".

These were genuine comments that came to the website. Alison also went into the Second Life every Wednesday night to meet people at a particular time.

She was interviewed by a number of newspapers including Daily Mail and Woman's Own - she felt an obligation to keep it going as she developed the audience.

The blog allowed her to write things that were contemporary.

She even created a cover for the magazine that "Sophie" wrote for - and would have liked to write some of the articles if she'd had the time.

Her next project is called "I love NY" - she realises she needs to spend a lot more time in pre-production this time round - in order to cover the bases before launching the project. Has a Facebook page, and is looking at a collaboration maybe pitched to TV.

The new project is likely to include mobile content as well as actual projects - and she wants to bring something into the story that will make it more exciting - by real life interaction/viral marketing.

But all things need to lead back to the novel....

http://www.sophie-stayingsingle.blogspot.com/